to feed a great city for a day
had been destroyed--and all in a quarrel over public land. The word
crept back to Washington, stripped to the bare facts--three thousand
sheep and their herder killed by cattlemen on the proposed Salagua
Reserve--and once more the question rose, Why was not that Salagua
Reserve proclaimed? No one answered. There was another sheep and
cattle war going on up in Wyoming, and the same question was being
asked about other proposed reserves. But when Congress convened in
December the facts began to sift out: there was a combination of
railroad and lumber interests, big cattlemen, sheepmen, and
"land-grabbers" that was "against any interference on the part of the
Federal Government," and "opposed to any change of existing laws and
customs as to the grazing of live stock upon the public domain." This
anomalous organization was fighting, and for years had been fighting,
the policy of the administration to create forest reserves and protect
the public land; and, by alliances with other anti-administration
forces in the East, had the President and his forester at their mercy.
There would be no forestry legislation that Winter--so the newspapers
said. But that made no difference to the Four Peaks country.

Only faint echoes of the battle at Washington reached the cowmen's
ears, and they no longer gave them any heed. For years they had been
tolled along by false hopes; they had talked eagerly of Forest Rangers
to draw two-mile circles around their poor ranches and protect them
from the sheep; they had longed to lease the range, to pay grazing
fees, anything for protection. But now they had struck the first blow
for themselves, and behold, on the instant the sheep went round, the
grass crept back onto the scarred mesa, the cattle grew fat on the
range! Juan Alvarez, to be sure, was dead; but their hands were clean,
let the sheepmen say what they would. What were a few sheep carcasses
up on the high mesa? They only matched the cattle that had died off
during the drought. When they met a sheep-herder now he gave them the
trail.

Tucked away in a far corner of the Territory, without money, friends,
or influence, there was nothing for it but to fight. All nature seemed
conspiring to encourage them in their adventure--the Winter came on
early, with heavy rains; the grass took root again among the barren
rocks and when, in a belated _rodeo_, they gathered their beef steers,
they received the highest selling